


A Quiet Connection

by KatD



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cancer, Dubious Consent, Frottage, Haunting, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:59:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatD/pseuds/KatD
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek dies at age 12. His ghost haunts Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Quiet Connection

Stiles has a friend that only he can see. His name is Derek. His favorite food is pizza and his second favorite is mac n’ cheese, which is Stiles’ favorite. He’s a big kid, 12 and a half years old. So he’s been in school for a long time and Stiles has just started this year. He likes watching sports on TV so Stiles plays on the floor if his Dad has a game on. It’s kinda boring for Stiles, but he likes to be around Derek and Derek wants to watch the games.

 

But Derek does awesome things too, like play cars or Legos with Stiles and read him extra bedtime stories after his Mom has tucked him in, or gives him little hugs and strokes his hair. Derek is the best. So he has to tell Mom and Dad all about him and let them know what chair he’s at during dinner so they don’t accidentally squish him. They smile at him and Dad rubs Stiles’ hair. They don’t get it. When Dad looks him in the eye one time and asks Stiles if he knows, if he really really understands that Derek isn’t real, Stiles nods.

 

But Derek isn’t imaginary at all. Derek _is_ real.

 

Stiles isn’t that good at making friends in Kindergarten, or 1st grade. He talks to the other kids a lot but they either ignore him or tease him for not finishing his addition and subtraction worksheets. By the time he makes it to 2nd grade his parents start asking him really weird questions about who he spent time with in school or sat next to during lunch. And then they start asking questions about Derek, if he still talks with Derek if they still play with cars up in Stiles’ room.

 

Stiles lies.

 

He feels bad about lying but he figured out last year that even other kids who have invisible friends don’t have any like Derek. They’ll talk to them sometimes, or set places at the table, but it’s never all the time and they eventually just stop and admit that invisible friends didn’t really exist. It was just playing pretend.

 

Stiles can’t stop because there’s no pretending. He sees Derek almost everyday, sometimes when Stiles wants to see him and have fun and sometimes just because. It would worry his parents if they found out, so he lies. And then he starts to wonder why he has to lie. Because he knows that something bad would happen if he told anyone the truth. Nobody can ever know about Derek.

 

Stiles spends the next year convinced he’s crazy.

 

He spends a lot of time not talking to Derek, telling him to go away. It hurts so much and Stiles gets lonely and he’s quiet in class and doesn’t even try to talk anymore. His parents get even more worried and start to ask if he wants to see someone about it. He feels like he’s getting punched in the chest every time they mention it because he’s sure that they know. They know he’s crazy and they’re just waiting for him to slip up. Derek gets worried, too, but he can’t do anything. Stiles doesn’t want comforting hugs. Not from Derek.

 

Derek starts to look so sad when he goes away even if he doesn’t stay away for more than a few days at a time. But he looks like he’s going to start crying every time Stiles forgets and talks to him like they used to. Stiles asks him why he gets sad when he and Stiles are together and Derek tells him that he’s crying because he’s happy and just like that Stiles understands something he didn’t before.

 

Derek is separate from him with separate thoughts and emotions and Stiles wonders why he hadn’t realized it before when it’s really obvious. Derek knows things that Stiles doesn’t. Stiles tests him by making him do long division from the back of the math book and he gets them all right.

 

After that Stiles asks questions. Derek’s last name is Hale, his family lives in a really big house out in the woods, and he’s pretty sure that he died. That makes Stiles shiver but Derek’s never been scary. Not once. So he tries not to let it bother him.

 

His Dad looks sad when Stiles asks him about Derek Hale, but he was honest and told Stiles that Derek Hale had gone missing almost 4 years ago. That some bad person had probably taken him and there wasn’t much of a chance that he was still alive. His Dad sat with him for a really long time and told Stiles that he should never go with other people, even with adults he knows, unless Mom or Dad tell him it’s okay. He’s also glad that he finally feels comfortable talking about Derek like this instead of creating an invisible 12-year-old friend to deal with something overheard his Dad should never have said at home.

 

He hugs his Dad and says that there’s no more invisible Derek, but he does feel a little bit bad for letting his Dad feel guilty when Stiles never overheard a thing. But at least this way he won’t suspect anything.

 

Because Derek has been through a lot and it’s up to Stiles to keep him safe.

 

Mom and Dad are both thrilled when he meets Scott McCall at the start of 3rd grade and the two of them become instantly inseparable. It’s actually pretty awesome because that means they get to have all the pizza and soda they want while they stay up late and watch Lord of the Rings again or play video games. At first he was worried that it would be strange having both Derek and Scott around, but it’s fine. After the first time he slips up and talks to Derek it’s pretty easy to convince Scott that he talks to himself sometimes because of his ADHD. Scott shrugs and focuses his attention back on Mario Kart.

 

When Scott comes over for his 10th birthday he starts to think about growing up and getting taller, stronger. He looks at Derek over the candles on his cake and realizes that Derek has grown up too. Stiles asks him later how old he is and Derek just shrugs and says 17. Stiles had thought that ghosts didn’t age because they weren’t alive but Derek says that he doesn’t want to stay 12 forever so he doesn’t.

 

Just a few weeks later Derek comes to Stiles in the middle of the night and curls up under the covers and cries silent and shaky into Stiles’ hair. Stiles’ entire body tightens in sharp, hot panic but he tries hard to relax, to hold Derek like he’d want to be held.

 

Stiles understands the next day in school. There’s a Hale girl just 2 grades ahead of Stiles. Was a Hale girl. Two kind looking adults come and talk to them during class and tell them if they feel sad or worried that they should tell their parents and come by to talk.

 

He does go talk to them. He asks what you can do to help someone who’s sad. They say that listening and being nice are a good start, but really sad people need to talk to professionals whose job it is to help. Stiles frowns and asks how he can become a professional but they just smile and ask questions that Stiles has no answers for. He runs away.

 

He runs to Derek.

 

Derek is a bit different for a while. He tells Stiles later that the first night was about feeling his family as they all died one-by-one while he was helpless. It’s weird to be a ghost mourning the dead, but Derek manages. He stays closer to Stiles after that and with the closeness comes questions. Derek doesn’t remember how he died. He can’t go be with his family because this doesn’t seem to work like any sort of afterlife he knows of. When he’s not with Stiles he sort of fades, feels pins-and-needles all over for a moment until there’s nothing. He doesn’t know of anything he left unresolved in his lifetime and he seriously has no clue why Stiles.

 

Stiles is 12 when he starts wondering why he can touch Derek and why Derek can touch things but not people. No one sees him, of course, but no one ever touches him either. Not even accidental brushes. Being with Derek is like a waking dream. He sets up his dad’s video recorder as Derek moves one of the toy cars they used to play with from the desk to the nightstand. They watch the recording in shocked silence as Stiles stands smoothly and moves the car.

 

Stiles reconsiders his sanity.

 

Then his Mom gets sick and sanity becomes relative.

 

No one tries to keep things from him, but they soften reality. Stiles turns to research to keep his mind occupied and he finds an article that links ovarian cancer to fertility treatments. Stiles turns to Derek and cries himself to sleep inside a solid circle of arms. He starts spending every waking moment not in school with his Mom and when she goes into the hospital to stay he’s there until they make him and his Dad leave. But his nights pass with Derek and a steady tension low in his belly and a rapidness in his pulse that leaves him with a shaky feeling.

 

In the end it takes her two years to die. Her health failing slow and steady without a single moment of hope in between, not a single day was ever better than the one before.

 

Stiles promises he’ll never recover.

 

His clinging to Derek at night takes on a more desperate note. He smells his own sweat as he rubs his face against broad pectoral muscles that shake beneath his cheek. He’s 14 and everything feels like static under his skin. It’s not just that he gets hard, thought it is that too, but everything inside of him feels tender and bruised.

 

He stopped caring two years ago if Derek was real or not. Real was pretty subjective anyway. But if he was just a figment then Stiles must hate himself to allow the intimacy of sharing breath and twined limbs but the separation of cotton and age.  For a while he comes clear and thin during wet dreams but it eventually comes white, occasionally slipping out of his boxers to leave sticky drops on Derek’s stomach.

 

Derek can no longer look him in the face until at least noon most days, and as more nights pass without Stiles crying himself to sleep Derek stops staying. Stiles tries to see it as a normal development, tries to feel sympathy for the 21-year-old man dealing so intimately with a 14-year-old’s sexual awakening, but mostly he tries to stop thinking about the intense rush of Derek’s presence in his bed.

 

Freshman year starts pretty uneventfully and Stiles and Scott busy themselves riding the bench during lacrosse games, getting Stiles and his mouth out of trouble, and doing homework together with Derek. Not that Scott realizes that Derek has been going to classes since middle school and Stiles wonders, not for the first time, how Derek copes being unable to speak to anyone but Stiles. Derek doesn’t mind. Stiles talks enough for the two of them.

 

Getting his smart-mouthed humor back after his Mom was something Stiles hadn’t been expecting, but it barely slowed even everyone smiled so sadly at him for a year, then two. Then Sophomore year the eyes start rolling again, people tell him to shut up without checking afterwards. He meets new kids that don’t really know and they treat him like a pest. In some ways it feels really good.

 

Derek points out a girl that keeps looking at him on the lacrosse bench, instead of watching the game. Stiles knows her a little. Her name is Erica, she has epilepsy, and she must like apples since she’s always eating them at lunch.  The next day, with a little nudge from Derek, Stiles goes to talk to her. He invites her to hang out with him and Scott and the three of them, plus Derek end up walking thought the woods until the sun starts to set. Afterwards when Scott slugs him in the arm for being stupid Stiles realizes that Erica wants to go out with him.

 

Stiles doesn’t know what to think. Erica seems cool. She’s no Lydia Martin, but who would want to deal with that much person in such a tiny package anyway. Erica is really pretty when she smiles. They get burgers on Saturday night, just the two of them, and when Stiles goes to drop her off in his Jeep she leans over and kisses him goodnight. Stiles can’t stop his triumphant whoop and Erica turns and laughs just as she reaches the door.

 

Stiles spends so much time with Erica over the next week that he sort of forgets about Scott. But he can’t feel bad about anything when he’s got someone to hold hands and make out with.

 

Until he realizes as he goes to grab the milk from the fridge he hasn’t seen Derek for 5 days.

 

Stiles panics. Derek might be the ghost equivalent of dead and that he’d never know for sure, but his terror must be a beacon because he turns a corner into Derek’s chest. He instantly throws his arms around Derek and cries into his neck, gripping tightly the fabric over his shoulder blades.

 

As his tears stop Stiles pulls away from Derek’s shoulder and realizes that his last growth spurt has put their eyes level. He brushes their lips together three times before something in Derek breaks apart and he slides his hand to cradle the back of Stiles’ head while he pulls their mouths together. It’s too wet and too open and Stiles nearly collapses when he realizes Derek has never been kissed. It’s difficult for Stiles to remember the preteen boy that showed up in his bedroom one night, lost and confused, but he does now.

 

Stiles gentles this kiss, coaxes the right rhythms and pressures from Derek’s mouth until they are both panting and hard and Stiles realizes they’re standing in the dinning room. The kiss breaks. And Stiles realizes in that moment that he is Derek’s everything, his entire world is nothing but Stiles. It’s the ultimate Stockholm syndrome with no possibility of rescue or recovery. Stiles is the only one. He’s both captor and savior. His only option is to tie himself deeply and completely to Derek in return. There is no way that Stiles can balance the discrepancy in control. Not entirely. But he can try.

 

That night in their room Stiles pulls Derek down on top of him and resumes lesson in making out until his sense of his own body blurs into nothing but quivering sensitivity. Derek drags teeth over the tendons of his neck and Stiles starts to talk to keep from moaning. Words start pouring out, how beautiful Derek is, how good, how often he’s touched himself thinking of Derek.

 

Derek makes a low noise and whispered that he knew, he always knew against Stiles’ flesh.

 

Their zippers come undone moments later and Stiles wraps his legs around Derek. Then there’s nothing but the press of solid, hot flesh. The sight of Derek's cock pressed so tightly and rocking against the course brown hairs on Stiles’ lower belly forces a deep, bleating plea. Derek moves faster, the instinct to chase orgasm rising in them until Stiles body shakes in climax as Derek presses tighter still. Stiles wants so badly to see Derek come. He tells him so and Derek complies.

 

They lie entwined together that night like they haven’t in years. They talk about changes, and about Erica and the future and how profoundly fucked up their relationship is. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but neither of them are in any hurry to change.


End file.
